


under the bridge

by talkwordytome



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Middle School, Alternate Universe - School, F/M, Middle School
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 13:11:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6611866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkwordytome/pseuds/talkwordytome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I work at a middle school, and I think middle schoolers get a really bad rap. They're absolutely crazy, but they're also some of the sweetest, funniest, and strangest people you'll ever meet. And since I spend so much time with them, I find myself thinking about middle school a LOT, and a few weeks ago, this thought came to me: my favorite shows, but set in a junior high AU. I mean, just picture it: the awkwardness! The angst! The crushes! The bad haircuts! The basement make-out sessions! It's poetry. Sheer poetry. Because X-Files is my favorite show lately (and because, let's be real, Mulder and Scully as adults don't behave all that much differently than middle schoolers), it was perhaps inevitable that this end up being an X-Files fic. Not quite a week ago, I posted a list of X-Files middle school AU head canons on my tumblr, and people were surprisingly and wonderfully into it, enough to convince me that maybe this was a fic worth sharing.</p>
<p>So, without further adieu: in which the year is 1993, and twelve-year-old Dana Scully is the new kid at school. She's moved a lot in her life and she's not overly thrilled to be somewhere new again, but then she meets this weird boy named Fox Mulder....</p>
            </blockquote>





	under the bridge

“Mom, where’s my purple skirt?”

“Has anyone seen my bookbag?”

“Ugh, bologna for lunch? Gross.”

“Bill, don’t shove your little brother!”

“Has Dad unpacked the boxes with our books in them yet?”

“Mom, Bill took the last bagel right out of my hand!”

“Tattletale!”

“Buttwipe!”

“You started it!”

“ _You_ started it!”

“Mom!”

“ _MOM_!”

“Enough!” Maggie Scully snaps, shoving bologna sandwiches into lunchboxes with a practiced ease. “The four of you have officially used up your ‘mom’ quota for the day. Nobody is allowed to say ‘mom’ again until tomorrow morning. It’s forbidden. Under penalty of death.”

“You can’t enforce that,” says Dana Scully--age twelve, third Scully child, and the victim of the bagel thievery--with her hands planted on her hips.

“Try me,” Maggie says dryly.

Melissa, the second-eldest, rolls her eyes with expert fourteen-year-old contempt. “But Mom--”

“Ah! What did I say?”

“Oh my God,” Melissa groans. “Fine, what _ever_ , I’ll find the dumb skirt myself.” She flounces off.

“What if we call you Maggie?” Bill--the oldest of the four siblings and the bagel thief--asks sensibly. “Instead of Mom.”

“Nice try,” Maggie says wryly, “but don’t even think about it. And give your sister back her bagel.”

“But--!”

“She had it first.”

“You heard her,” Dana says smugly. “Give it back.”

And Bill does, though not before coating it with an especially slobbery lick. “Enjoy!” he exclaims as he slouches out of the kitchen. Dana throws the bagel at his retreating form, but she misses.

“Dana, for goodness sake; we don’t throw our food.”

“It’s his fault!” Dana says, aiming a half-hearted kick at the kitchen island. “He’s such a jerk.”

“Don’t call your brother names,” Maggie says absently as she writes the name of her youngest, Charlie, on his brown paper lunch bag. She pauses. “I’ll talk to him about it, okay? But for now, please just have, I don’t know, toast? I think there’s jam in the refrigerator. Possibly. Your father and I still need to go grocery shopping.”

“I don’t want toast!” Dana says, near tears. “I _wanted_ a _bagel_. But I never get anything I want in this stupid family.”

Maggie looks at her third child, small-for-her-age and round faced and much too serious. Her father’s girl. Maggie’s gaze softens. “Dana,” she says, “I know you’re nervous about your new school--”

“I am _not_.” 

Maggie sighs. “Fine,” she amends. “I know you don’t want to go to a new school--”

“It isn’t fair!” Dana bursts out. “Everyone keeps saying how much I’m going to like it here, but you know what other places I liked? _Germany_ I liked. _Honolulu_ I liked. _Okinawa_ I liked. And Norfolk, and San Diego, Charleston, and a hundred thousand million other places.” She takes a deep breath. “And then we always _leave_.”

“I know it’s been hard on the four of you,” Maggie says sympathetically, pulling Dana into a reluctant hug. “But your dad is retired now, so we’re in Alexandria for good. And that’s an important thing. We aren’t going anywhere.”

“Well, yeah, but what if I hate it?” Dana whispers into Maggie’s chest, and she feels the rumble of Maggie’s answering laughter. “What if this time I want to leave?”

“My, you’re not an easy one to please.”

“I have discerning tastes.”

“Excellent word.”

“It was on a vocabulary list in English last year,” Dana says, pulling out of her mom’s arms. “If I do hate it,” she says firmly, “I'm running away forever.”

“Oh really?”

“Dad’s taught me the basic survival skills. I could fend for myself,” Dana says with pride.

“I bet you could,” Maggie says fondly, then drops a kiss on top of Dana’s head. She takes her daughter gently by her shoulders. “Are you sure you don't want me to come with you today? I'd leave as soon you're settled in your homeroom.”

“No thank-you,” Dana says, polite but firm.

“You're _positive_ \--?”

“Mo- _ther_!” Dana says. “I'm perfectly capable of navigating the four blocks between school and home by myself. Plus, I'm in junior high now. I can find my homeroom without you holding my hand.”

“I know you can,” Maggie says, a bit wistfully. 

Dana sighs and ghosts her mother’s cheek with a kiss, a Little Dana gesture that had become rarer and rarer lately. “Thank-you for offering,” she says, “but I’m okay. Honest.”

“Of course you are,” Maggie says. “You’re our Starbuck.” Dana blushes a bit at the use of the old (and, in her opinion, slightly babyish) nickname, but she straightens her back and salutes her mother anyway.

Dana grabs her Princess Leia lunchbox off the counter and hugs her mother, quick and tight. 

“Love you, kiddo,” Maggie murmurs. “Love you bunches.”

“I love you, too.”

~ ~ ~

Dana--in her corduroy skirt and her tights and her scuffed loafers and her handed-down-by-Missy sweater--feels much younger than her twelve years, and deeply, deeply uncool.

It doesn’t help that she’s never been quite so alone; in spite of all the moving, she’s never had to be at a school without at least one other sibling there with her, and this year--for the first time--she’s the only Scully child present. She thinks of Charlie: alone too, technically, but safe within the cozy confines of the his third grade class at the small elementary school. She thinks of Missy and Bill, safe together at their big, exciting high school. She wishes, briefly, that she had taken her mother up on her offer; she knows that probably would’ve made her feel even more impossibly lame and childish, but at the very least she wouldn’t have been so completely by herself.

Dana swallows hard and bites her tongue and she _knows_ her stupid mouth is trembling like it always does when she’s about to cry. She wills herself not to. Instead, she squares her shoulders and takes a deep breath and steers herself into the main office. _Like Ahab_ , she thinks, _off to fight the great white whale_.

There’s a pretty secretary who doesn’t look all that much older than Missy manning the front desk. She’s typing something on her large Macintosh computer, and when the phone rings she picks it up and in a smooth voice says, “Battlefield Middle School, how may I help you?”

Dana can hear a copy machine droning somewhere, and the air is heady with the smell of freshly percolated coffee. In the workroom, she can hear teachers sifting through papers as they murmur conversations, sometimes breaking into brief peals of laughter. It’s really no different than any of the other dozen school offices she’s been in, and she feels herself begin to relax a little. 

“Do you need something?”

Dana starts. The pretty secretary, her phone call apparently finished, is staring at Dana with her left eyebrow quirked up. Dana, lulled to distraction by the familiar sweet hum of the room, freezes momentarily until she remembers what brought her there to begin with. “I’m new,” she says, gaining confidence as she runs through a drill that’s nearly as old as she is. “My name is Dana Scully, and I don’t know where my homeroom is.”

The secretary quickly types something into her computer. “Scully, Scully,” she murmurs, then clicks her mouse. “Here you are. Okay, so, your homeroom is E-9, which is in E hall, obviously. First bell rings at 7:35, and homeroom ends at 7:55. Seven classes a day, forty-five minutes each, with four minutes to switch in-between. You’ll need a P.E. uniform. Seventh graders have the first lunch shift at 10:40. Any questions?” She recites her spiel quickly and with little inflection, in the way of someone who’s done it dozens of times before and isn’t overly thrilled to be doing it again.

Dana shakes her head, a bit dazed by the deluge of information. “Good,” the secretary says, then picks a sheet of paper up from a large pile next to her. “Here’s a map of the school.” She points a shiny red fingernail at a spot on it. “That’s your homeroom. When you leave the office, go left, through the cafeteria double doors, straight down the hall, left again, and then you’re there. Make sense?”

Dana nods, and then the phone rings again. “Good luck,” the secretary says vaguely, her attention already turned to the call.

Dana hitches her bookbag up on her shoulders and clutches the map in her clammy hands. “Left,” she whispers, “doors, straight, left again, and then I’m there.”

“Did you say something?”

Dana feels a blush start at her toes and reach all the way to her hairline. “Uhm,” she says, and then races from the office before the secretary can ask her anything else.

Dana walks slowly, taking time to observe her new surroundings, something that she knows from experience will come in handy later. There are clatches of giggling girls everywhere, excited to together again after a summer spent apart. The boys are in looser, less official groups, but they’re groups all the same; they discuss the relative merits of trying out for either football or basketball. Everyone seems excited about some episode of a TV show Dana hasn’t ever seen, and she thinks--again--of Missy, who is so easygoing and prettier and more popular than Dana can ever hope to be, who is probably at this very moment deciding that she wants to try out for the dance team. _She’ll probably make it easily_ , Dana thinks, and she might’ve been bitter except that there wasn’t any use. That’s just who Missy was.

“E-6,” she whispers. “E-7...E-8...E-9.”

The class inside is noisy in a good-natured sort of way, and the teacher--like the secretary--is young and pretty. Her prettiness, though, is somehow warmer, more accessible. She has long brown hair that she’s piled on top of her head, and she’s wearing a full-skirted yellow dress that’s covered in white polkadots. Her eyes are bright and her smile is kind and Dana feels a smidgen braver.

“Excuse me,” Dana says, and the teacher turns her kind smile on Dana.

“Yes, honey?” she says. “Can I help you?”

“The secretary told me that this is my homeroom,” Dana says, more abruptly than she’d intended, oddly flustered by the loveliness of this new teacher. “I’m new. I’m Dana Scully.”

The teacher’s smile widens and she claps her hands together, as though nothing in this world delights her more than Dana being a new student in her homeroom. “Welcome, Dana!” she says. “I’m Miss Vallente. I teach seventh grade English--you’ll have me, since you have me for homeroom--and drama for the whole school. I have homeroom set up alphabetically for just this week, to make things a bit more streamlined. Your name is on your desk, and all of the papers you’ll need--including your schedule, which I’m sure you’re ever so curious about--are there too. Sound good?”

Dana nods, which she seems to be doing a lot of lately.

“Excellent,” Miss Vallente says happily, then squeezes Dana’s arm. “This is a lovely school, Dana. I think you’re going to be very happy here. Monica!” she suddenly calls out, and makes a come here gesture.

A tall girl with dark hair and wide brown eyes appears at the desk. She grins at Dana, flashing rainbow braces. “This is Monica Reyes,” Miss Vallente says. “She’s one of my drama stars. Monica, this is Dana Scully. She’s a new student this year, and I want you to be her guide for the next few days, okay? Help her learn her way around the halls, show her the ropes, things like that.”

Monica nods enthusiastically to Miss Vallente, and then turns to Dana. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go look at your schedule and see if we have any classes together.”

Monica reads the flimsy sheet of paper quickly, apparently satisfied with what she sees. “You’re on the G and T track,” she notes. “Me too.”

“G and T?” Dana asks. “Like...gin and tonic?”

“Gifted and Talented,” Monica explains. “Basically all it means is that our core subjects, like math and stuff, are honors. They’re supposed to be harder, but they’re really not.”

“I didn't ask to be in it,” Dana says.

“There must've been something on your transcripts that made you eligible,” Monica says. “But, hey, at least this means you don't have to take P.E every day.”

“What?” Dana asks. “Why?”

“The only important difference between us and everyone else is that regular seventh graders have P.E. last period every day, but we only have it every other day. On the other days we have enrichment,” Monica says, rolling her eyes and making sarcastic jazzhands when she says ‘enrichment.’ Dana raises her eyebrows. “We do projects and advanced work and sometimes talk about our feelings,” Monica elaborates. “It’s stupid, but it’s better than P.E. Ooh, you’re in drama! So am I.”

“What?” Dana hisses, snatching the schedule from Monica. “I don’t want to be in drama.”

“Why not?” Monica asks. “It’s super fun, and Miss Vallente is the nicest teacher ever.”

Dana grinds the toe of her left loafer into the floor. “I don’t...like that sort of thing. Acting, or whatever.”

Monica smiles slyly. “Are you shy, Dana?” she teases, and Dana frowns.

“No,” Dana says firmly. “I just don’t like it. That’s all. Don’t you get to pick your electives?”

“We did that at the end of last year,” Monica says apologetically. “I guess since you weren’t here they just randomly assigned you them.”

Dana groans. “That sucks.”

Monica shrugs and takes the schedule back. “We have English together, too, but you knew that already. Oh, and we have the same P.E. teacher! And first period biology. So that’s four things, plus enrichment, which is pretty great.” She frowns at something. “You need to go talk to your guidance counselor. They put you in the wrong math class; only eighth graders can take geometry.”

Dana takes her schedule back and shakes her head. “No,” she says slowly, “I think that’s right. I took algebra at my last school.”

Monica stares at Dana with frank astonishment on her face, and Dana grows hot and prickly. “What?” she asks uncomfortably.

“Geometry is for advanced eighth graders,” Monica says, then narrows her eyes suspiciously. “You’re not some, like, super genius kid, are you? Like in _Little Man Tate_?”

Dana picks at her thumbnail. “I don’t know,” she says. “I mean, I’m smart, I guess.”

“I guess so,” Monica agrees with faint reverence, but then the bell rings. She grabs Dana’s hand and yanks her along. “Come on,” she says. “It’s time for bio. We have Mr. Carter. He makes dumb jokes and he likes the kids who play sports best but he’s okay.”

The halls are loud and overcrowded, but one of the main perks of being little is enhanced ducking and weaving abilities. Dana skates through the traffic easily, and it helps that Monica is there to guide her. Monica seems to know absolutely everyone they pass, and though Dana feels safe with her, she also begins to feel lonely in that peculiar way she does when she’s around too many people for too long. It’s as though everyone is in on some big secret, and she’s always just...there. On the fringes.

Suddenly, Dana collides into a tall, skinny boy with messy brown hair. “Hey, watch where you’re going,” she commands, forgetting her nervousness and mild melancholy in her irritation.

“Sorry,” the boy mutters. He’s wearing a black sweater that has a green alien head knitted onto the front of it, and his jeans are several inches too short, as though he grew a lot over the summer without anyone noticing. His ankles are pale and bony.

“Think fast, Spooky!”

A muscular boy with an arrogant face knocks Alien Sweater Boy’s books out of his hands as he walks by. Alien Sweater Boy turns a dark shade of crimson, and everybody who saw what happened laughs at him, but Dana doesn’t. She’s about to ask him if he needs any help, but Monica pulls her along.

“The boy in the sweater is Fox Mulder,” Monica says authoritatively. 

Dana giggles. “ _Fox_?”

Monica giggles too. “Yeah, it’s bad. He hates it. He’s gone by Mulder since the third grade.”

The two girls walk into a classroom. The teacher, Dana assumes it’s Mr. Carter, is a balding middle-aged man with a loud voice that he uses to tease familiar faces. The room is filled with lab tables, and on the board “CHOOSE YOUR SEATS WISELY” is written in neat block letters. Dana and Monica pick two at an otherwise empty table near the door. 

“Why was that boy so mean to him?” Dana asks as she unpacks her things.

“Who?”

“Fox,” Dana says. “Mulder. Why was that boy in the hockey jersey so mean to him?”

Monica looks around the room, then leans on her elbows across the table, gesturing for Dana to do the same. “Mulder is really, really weird,” Monica says in a conspiratorial whisper, once they’ve assumed the gossip position. “But it’s not totally his fault. At the very end of fourth grade, his little sister--Sam--was kidnapped one night, right out of their bedroom. Mulder was there the whole time, but he didn’t do anything about it. Or couldn’t, I guess.”

“Oh my God.”

Monica nods seriously. “He was homeschooled for all of fifth grade so he could get like a million hours of therapy since he couldn’t deal with the trauma and all, and when he came back last year he was all angry and quiet and wouldn’t talk to any of his old friends and had to go to the guidance office a whole bunch.” She pauses meaningfully and lowers her voice even more. “But that’s not even the craziest part.”

Dana blinks. “It’s not?” _What could be crazier than that?_

“He swears-- _swears_ \--that Sam was abducted by aliens.”

“Oh my _God_.”

At that moment the bell rings, effectively cutting short their conversation. Mr. Carter is about to close the classroom door when none other than Fox Mulder himself crashes in, glowering like a storm cloud.

“Mr. Mulder!” Mr. Carter booms. “How nice of you to join us. Late on the first day. Glad to see we picked up some good habits over the summer.”

Mulder slumps down in his chosen seat and scowls at the table. His groupmates are two boys: a chubby, glasses-wearing one, and one with a sweet face and sandy brown hair. They both offer Mulder sympathetic glances, but he ignores them.

Dana Scully, in spite of herself, is intrigued.

~ ~ ~

The rest of the morning--second period English, third period geometry, and the first half of fourth period drama--passes largely without incident, excepting the first few minutes of geometry’s. The teacher, an older woman with a truly unfortunate haircut, made Dana stand up in front of the class, which was already bad enough. Then the woman (at this point Dana began to suspect that she was clinically insane) announced, in front of God and everybody, “Class, this is Dana Scully. She is _brand new_ this year, and she’s just a _seventh grader_ , so we’re all going to be very, very nice to her, right?” The class full of eighth graders had snickered, and Dana had idly wondered if spontaneous combustion was a skill a person could master in under two minutes.

She relays this story to Monica as they sit down to lunch, in response to which she groans in solidarity. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “That’s awful; I can’t believe she did that. Did you want to just die?”

“It was the worst,” Dana says, pulling her bologna sandwich out of her lunchbox. She takes a vicious bite. “It was so embarrassing. I mean, it’s not like I’m in kindergarten. I’m practically the same age as those other kids.”

“Exactly,” Monica says. She pulls the foil top off of her container of peach yogurt and licks it thoughtfully. “You could’ve pretended to faint. That’s what I would’ve done.”

Dana laughs. “How would that have helped anything?”

Monica shrugs. “It would’ve distracted them.”

“Yeah, great,” Dana says sarcastically, “and then instead of just being Creepy Prodigy Kid, I would’ve been Creepy Prodigy Kid who Fainted on the First Day of School. What a great reputation that would’ve been,”

“Okay, fair point.”

“Can we sit with you guys?”

Dana looks up, and realizes the two boys from Mulder’s group in biology are standing next to hers and Monica’s lunch table. “Sure,” Monica says, clearing a space. Dana is briefly surprised; she’s new to Battlefield and doesn’t quite understand its hierarchy yet, but she knows enough to know the difference between the popular kids and the unpopular ones. Monica, for example, is popular. She’s pretty and nice and wears cool clothes. The two boys are unpopular. They shouldn’t be mixing, and yet--they are.

Dana decides then and there that she likes Monica Reyes. Quite a bit, actually.

“Dana,” Monica says, “this is Melvin Frohike.” She points to the chubby boy, and his eyes widen appreciatively behind his glasses when he looks at Dana. Dana blushes. 

“Just Frohike,” he says, his voice cracking a little. “Not Melvin.”

Monica rolls her eyes. “This is John Byers,” she says cordially, and John Byers waves shyly, obviously satisfied with Monica’s introduction. Dana waves back.

“So Dana,” Monica says, taking another bite of her yogurt, “what’s your _deal_?”

Dana half-smiles. “What do you mean?”

“Like, where did you go to school last year? Where are you from? Parents a total drag? Brothers and sisters? Deep dark secrets you’d like to share with the class?”

“Uhm,” Dana begins, “my parents are okay, as far as parents go. I have an older sister, an older brother, and a younger brother. Last year I went to school in Charleston, but I’m not really from anywhere, exactly.”

“How can you not be from anywhere?” Monica asks.

“My dad was in the navy, so I’ve lived all over the place. Germany, Japan, Hawaii, California, and a bunch of others I’m forgetting. But he’s retired now; he has a job at the Pentagon. My mom says we’re staying in Alexandria until I graduate from high school, at least, but I don’t totally believe her.”

“Wow,” Monica breathes, having barely let Dana finish. “So you’re, like, incredibly _worldly_.”

“Not exactly,” Dana says uncertainly. “We’ve lived all over the world, but always on navy bases with bunches of other American families. So it’s not as though I was ever fully immersed in the cultures or anything like that.”

“Still,” Monica pouts, “it’s more exotic places than I’ve ever been. Unless you count the Outer Banks as exotic, which I certainly don’t.”

One of Monica’s friends wanders up to the table to chat, and Dana turns her attention to Frohike and John Byers. “So,” she says, hoping her tone is in the neighborhood of _casually curious_ , and not _oddly obsessed with someone she doesn’t know just because he’s sort of cute in a dorky way and has a mysterious past_ , “do you guys know Fox Mulder? You sat with him during biology this morning.”

“Everyone knows Fox Mulder,” Frohike says. “That’s a side effect of your sister being abducted by extraterrestrials.”

Dana gives them her best skeptical look. “Do you honestly buy that story?”

“Of course we do,” John Byers says, his voice as serious and sweet as his face. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Dana is momentarily stumped, but she quickly regroups. “Well, first of all, because aliens aren’t real.”

“You have no proof!” Frohike yells, his mouth full of Twinkie.

“Neither do you!” Dana says, wiping Twinkie crumbs off the front of her sweater. “Look, I’m not saying life on other planets isn’t possible; it definitely is. In fact, it’s statistically probable. But how would they even get here? How did they manage to access that sort of technology? Earth is a marvel, that all of this coalesced just right for us to evolve; any lifeforms out there would almost definitely be unicellular. Not to mention that the atmosphere on most other planets isn’t exactly ideal for carbon-based lifeforms. I guess it’s possible that there are planets like ours in some other solar system, but by the time they evolved enough to be capable of conscious thought, discovered space travel, and got here, we’d all be long dead anyway. That’s the problem with light years, you know.” She says all of this in one breath.

Frohike and John Byers both gape at her, clearly impressed, and Dana puffs out her flat chest a bit and tries not to smirk. “Who says the life-forms have to be carbon-based?” Frohike finally, weakly, argues back, but John Byers cuts him off.

“Why do you want to know about Mulder?” he asks, pale eyes fixed on Dana.

Dana stops and thinks for a moment, and when she answers, the words aren’t the ones she’d planned on saying at all. “He looked sad.”

John Byers nods sagely. “My older sister told me that women are often attracted to men they feel need fixing.”

Dana gapes at him. “I’m not _attracted_ to him,” she sputters. “I don’t even _know_ him, and I _definitely_ don’t want to fix him! _God_.”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” John Byers says primly, and Dana places her face in her hands and groans. “But seriously,” he continues, the teasing gone from his voice, “He is really sad; the thing with his sister was weird and awful, and he was never the same after. He lost all of his friends. Frohike and I keep inviting him to join our D and D league, but he always declines.”

“D and D?” Dana asks. “What is it with this school and acronyms?”

“Dungeons and Dragons,” Frohike answers, biting into a new Twinkie.

“Oh. Isn’t that game sort of,” Dana giggles, “I don’t know...nerdy?”

Frohike gestures at himself broadly. “Your point?” His mannerisms remind Dana of her Uncle Peter, who lives in Seattle and rarely leaves his cave-like cabin.

Dana opens her mouth, then closes it again. “I guess I don’t have one,” she says finally. “Is Dungeons and Dragons fun?”

“It’s the greatest,” John Byers says. “You can join our league, too, if you want.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” Frohike says adamantly.

“Okay,” Scully says, and the smile on her face is threatening to become a full-on grin. “Maybe I will.”

~ ~ ~

Fox Mulder isn’t in Dana’s fourth period drama class, or her fifth period civics class, or her sixth period German class. She’s oddly disappointed. She isn’t sure why she cares about him so much; it’s probably partly the whole kidnapped sister thing, but that’s not entirely it. She doesn’t know him, not really, but she likes him--she likes him and his dopey sweater and his bad haircut and his skinny ankles. She likes that he seems like as much of an outcast as her even though he’s been here his whole life.

Now it’s last period P.E. Hardly anyone brought their uniforms, so the coaches can’t really enforce dressing out, and they get a forty-five minute free period instead. Dana gravitates toward Monica, but a huge group of Monica’s friends are in their class, too, and while they don’t exclude Dana or make her feel otherwise unwelcome, she still feels conspicuous and detached, like an anthropologist observing a foreign tribe. She’s just resigned herself to finding a secluded patch of clovers and making a flower crown when she spots Fox Mulder sitting on the bleachers, his lanky form hunched over a battered paperback.

Dana clenches her fists, gathering courage, and makes a decision.

“You’re in my biology class,” Dana says, plopping herself down next to him. Fox Mulder shoots her a look, but stays silent. “I’m Dana Scully,” Dana tries again, offering her hand for a shake. Fox Mulder ignores it. 

“Fox Mulder,” Fox Mulder says, sounding irritated at the interruption, “but call me--”

“Mulder.”

Mulder briefly looks up from his book and almost smiles. “Yeah.”

“What’re you reading?” Dana asks, peering around to try and catch sight of the title.

In lieu of answering, Mulder holds the book up so Dana can see for herself. _A Brief History of Time_. Dana gasps in recognition. “I love that book,” she enthuses. “I’ve read it six times.”

“Cool,” Mulder says, scrawling something in the margin.

“‘The universe doesn’t allow perfection,’” Scully quotes.

“Uh-huh,” Mulder says, dog-earing a page.

Dana crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow and decides to play her trump card. “I wrote Stephen Hawking last year,” she pauses dramatically, and when Mulder doesn’t respond she continues, “and he wrote me back.”

“Yeah,” Mulder says. “Sure he did.”

Dana scowls. “He did,” she insists. “I have the letter with me. I bring it everywhere.”

“Form letters don’t count,” Mulder warns as Dana fishes through her Jansport.

“Like I’d care about a stupid form letter,” Dana scoffs. “Aha!” she yells triumphantly, then shoves a well-loved sheet of paper at Mulder. “Read it and weep.”

She watches Mulder’s eyes widen as he scans the page, and she smirks. “My favorite part is when he says that my ‘take on Einstein’s time paradox is unique and surprisingly well-developed for a person of my age,’” she says smugly.

Mulder’s eyes slowly leave the letter. He stares at Dana with an interest he lacked mere moments ago. “You weren’t lying,” he says.

“I told you so.”

He hands the letter back to Dana and shoves a shock of brown hair out of his eyes. “That’s pretty cool,” he grudgingly allows, and Dana beams. “You should laminate it so it lasts.”

“That’s a good idea, actually,” she says, and decides she’ll make Bill take her to Kinkos over the weekend.

Mulder puts _Time_ gently back into his bookbag, and Dana takes that as a good sign. “You’re new,” he says simply. So he isn’t a great conversationalist; big deal. He cares about Stephen Hawking, so Dana likes him.

“Brilliant observation,” she replies.

“This school sucks,” Mulder says. “Just so you know.”

“That’s not what everyone has been telling me.”

“Yeah, well,” Mulder says darkly, “maybe that’s because they’re the ones who make it suck so much.”

“Like that boy who knocked your books out of your hands this morning?” Dana asks shrewdly. 

Mulder sighs. “You saw that?” he asks. Dana nods. “Yeah, like him,” Mulder says. “His name is Alex Krycek and he’s a liar and an asshole. Don’t listen to anything he tells you.”

“Duly noted,” Dana says. She briefly considers asking Mulder about his sister, but decides against it. “What’s with the sweater?” she asks instead.

Mulder looks down, pulls at it, and grins. “What?” he asks. “Not a fan of little green men, Scully?”

Dana rolls her eyes. “You don’t honestly believe in that stuff, do you?”

“I absolutely do,” Mulder says fervently. “The truth is out there, Scully.”

Dana raises her eyebrows. “The truth?”

“Yeah, the truth,” Mulder says. “Everything the government tries to keep from us.”

“Like Roswell?” Scully asks sarcastically.

“Please,” Mulder dismisses. “Roswell is nothing but a smoke screen. I’m talking about the _real_ stuff, the stuff you can’t find in some old encyclopedia.”

“And how exactly have you managed to find it all out?”

“Oh, I have my ways, Scully,” Mulder says with a wink. “I have my ways.”

The bell rings. Mulder throws his bookbag on and stands up. He takes the bleachers two at a time and calls over his shoulder, “See you in biology, Scully. If I’m late, tell Carter to go screw himself from me.”

“I’ll pass that along,” Dana calls back.

She has no idea what’s made him decide to call her Scully instead of Dana, but she rather likes it.

~ ~ ~

That night, over dinner, Dana tells her parents about Monica and her rainbow braces, about Miss Vallente, about her cool civics teacher who plays them protest songs on her record player, about Frohike and John Byers and their Dungeons and Dragons league, about how she didn’t get lost in the halls a single time.

She doesn’t tell them about Mulder. She almost does, but at the last minute she changes her mind. She wants to keep him her secret for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Important things first: a MAJOR shout-out to my beautiful and brilliant girlfriend, alias csiwholocked33, for being my beta! She is fabulous. I owe her many kisses.
> 
> The title comes from the song "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, because it seems like something Mulder and Scully would listen to when they feel angsty?? Also it's sort of a placeholder. Also maybe there will be a bridge later. Who knows? It's a surprise.
> 
> Okay, so, I know that seventh graders generally aren't this witty and precocious, but trust me: speaking as someone who spends her days with seventh graders, you don't want to read something with hyper-realistic dialogue.
> 
> In case it's not clear enough, this chapter takes place on the very first day of school for everyone.
> 
> Though I work in a middle school now, I was but a wee babe back in 1993, and thus my knowledge of early 1990s middle school culture is somewhat limited. If anything rings at all false to anyone who DOES have the sort of firsthand insight I lack, please feel free to drop a note in the comments!
> 
> Fun fact: Battlefield Middle School is the name of the school where I work.
> 
> Though "Carter" was just a random last name I picked and had nothing at all to do consciously with Chris Carter, it's still so very satisfying to hear baby Mulder say "tell Carter to go screw himself from me", no?
> 
> I borrowed the idea of Stephen Hawking writing Scully back from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which is an excellent book and perhaps the most sub-par movie to ever be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Like the dialogue: yes, fine, it's unrealistic, but can you think of a better meet cute for baby Mulder and Scully? No? Neither can I.
> 
> If any of you guys happen to feel like reading my list of head canons that inspired this fic, find it here! http://talkwordytome.tumblr.com/post/142823540941/i-dont-think-anyone-has-ever-specifically-asked


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